I work at a neighborhood bar. It opens at noon but it’s usually pretty quiet until 4 or 5 in the afternoon. 80% of our daytime clientele are regulars. Picture Cheers without good writers.
A couple of weeks ago, 2 p.m.:
I have four customers. All of them regulars.
A couple walks in the door; I don’t know them. They appear to be in their mid/late 50’s. She has on so much perfume that it’s like a slap in the face; it assaults us before she even makes it to the bar. All five of us grimace involuntarily.
They sit down; he orders a beer, and she orders a bourbon and Coke. She opens a tab with her credit card.
They whisper to each other for a minute or two.
And then they begin making out.
I think it’s perhaps a momentary thing. I raise my eyebrows a bit but decide to pretend it isn’t going on.
It goes on. And on. And on. It increases in intensity. Slurping sounds are being made. Lip-smacking sucking sounds. His baseball cap begins sliding off his head, because her hands are sliding up into his hair. I can’t see their faces because they are smashed together so intensely I wonder idly how they are breathing.
Roger, one of the regulars on the other side of the bar, observes laconically that perhaps they are having an affair, and they can’t afford a room.
More slurping sounds. His hat is completely off his head by now. His thinning hair is all askew, and the noises are getting distinctly off-putting at this point. It reminds me of the sound cranberry sauce makes when it’s sliding out of the can at Thanksgiving. I’ve got my back to them, but I can’t block out the sound. I even turn up the volume on the Olympics, but let’s face it, the Olympics are no match for this event.
They pause from time to time to drink their beverages and order new ones–and/or to breathe–but this goes on, basically uninterrupted, for over half an hour.
No, I am not exaggerating. I was there and I could barely believe it myself.
The regulars are, by degrees, amused, annoyed, revolted, and incredulous. One of them says he has to leave. It’s making him ill. Another one answers his cell phone “LOVERS LANE!” and then laughs uproariously. Another one stage-whispers, “Get a room for f**k’s sake, people…Jesus Christ…”
As for me, the whole incident has taken on a fingernails-on-the-chalkboard quality. Between the revolting sounds and the smell of her perfume and the regulars’ complaints, I have a raging headache.
Finally the woman gets up to go to the restroom.
The man, with no face to suck at the moment, turns to me and says, “What kind of TV’s are these?”
I don’t even look at him, I’m so annoyed. “Plasma,” I say shortly.
“You don’t look like you’re very happy,” he observes, with astonishing perception.
I stare at my fingernails. “I’m not.”
He chuckles. “Well, you’d probably be a lot happier if you weren’t working!”
I look up. He’s grinning at me with his jacked-up hair and his big sweaty face and I just can’t handle it. I walk over to him and lean over the bar so that only he can hear me. “Actually,” I snap, “I’d be a lot happier if you two would stop making out. It’s making me uncomfortable and I think it’s VERY inappropriate! Okay?”
He blinks at me, his smile gone. “Oh. Okay.”
She comes back from the bathroom and they begin whispering again. A few moments later she stands up and says loudly, “We are going to have one more drink, OK? And then we are going to leave. And let me tell you, young lady, you have just REALLY fked up your tip, because I tip REALLY well. I’m a food and beverage manager and I know how to take care of people, and you just FKED yourself!”
I hand her their last round of drinks, smile and shrug. “There’s a time and a place, ma’am, and this ain’t it.”
“Well, we’re going to go over there–” she points to the lounge area in the corner with sofas-- “so we won’t OFFEND you any longer, and let me just tell you that you missed out on a REALLY GREAT TIP, young lady!”
“Do you want me to close your tab now?”
“No,” she says, tossing her hair. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to close it.”
Away they go, to sit on the sofa that faces the wall in the corner of the bar; all I can see are their heads. Then their heads disappear for a little while.
Roger says he sure hopes I’m going to clean up the mess they’re probably making.
I tell him, quite truthfully, that I’ve never even sat on those sofas and don’t intend to go near them, now or ever.
About twenty minutes later she comes back up to the bar and asks me to close out her tab on her card.
I hand it to her and say, “I apologize but our printer ink is going out so this is impossible to read…your tab is eighteen dollars.”
“Make it for twenty-five, would you?”
I blink. She’s going to tip me seven bucks? Color me surprised. “So you want me to make the total twenty-five?” I say, just to double-check.
She shakes her head impatiently. “No, no, ADD twenty-five to the tab.”
“Add twenty-five dollars to the eighteen…?” I say blankly.
“Yes. That’s for you. I can see it’s slow right now and I always tip well!” she says cheerfully. “So that twenty-five is for YOU, sweetpea!”
I am very rarely speechless, but she managed it. I am so flustered I do the math wrong and short myself a dollar. I manage to tell her thanks.
She signs it, waves goodbye as if we’re best friends, and then heads out, arm-in-arm with her grinning partner in crime.
Roger says that perhaps I should consider that tip a sofa-cleaning fee.
I never did look at the sofa. I don’t want to know.
